My MD is allllmost gone... Some tips!

[Mevve]

Me:  female, early 20s, not American/English, fantasizing since I was 8 years old, for hours and hours a day, about celebrities, made up people, myself.

Usual content: love, feeling secure, sexuality, getting allll the attention, being the greatest, the best.

Spinning around in my room to music.

 

My solutions:

 

1.  Therapy. I found out I have/had social phobia, depression, PTSS (sexual abuse in my childhood) and the symptoms of avoidant personality disorder (never got the diagnosis).

In my therapy I learned to cope with my anxiety and depression by FEELING bad emotions (sadness, anger, hate, loneliness, etc). Instead of avoiding those feelings, I had to FEEL it and acknowledge I had them. Lots of tears; writing letters, confronting people, etc.; SCARY as heck, but worth it. Go see a counselor and tell them everything!

 

2. I took a mindfulness course. If you don't know what it is: learning to live in the now. Please look it up!! More so than therapy this course was awesome! I would recommend it to EVVVVVERYONE with MD. I truly believe it's *the* solution for MD. You are 'forced' to live right here, right now. There is no room for any fantasies anymore. It's awesome.

A mindfulness course can be spiritual, but I didn't want that. Be sure that when you look for mindfulness courses, you find a down to earth approach to it. (I’m a Christian, so I didn’t want to do the spiritual approach).

 

3. Reducing fantasizing one by one: first getting rid of fantasies which had NOTHING to do with my own life. All the made up stories were gone: this was surprisingly easy (once I had truly made up my mind that I wanted to quit). I continued for a couple weeks to strictly fantasize about an improved me (the way I hoped to be in 10-20 years). Next step was to get rid of those fantasies (about me in 10-20 years), because they were just as fake as the fantasies about me being different people.

Now I only allow myself to fantasize about pretty much exactly the way I am today. This last type of fantasy I consider to be normal: I fantasize about future events that will actually happen, or conversations I have with people I actually know. This type of fantasizing can be very useful I believe: because you force yourself to think about what you actually believe & helps you to practice for the real thing. After talking to friends about this, I found out lots of ‘normal’ people fantasize about themselves, so I don't think I want to change this last part.

The first few weeks after deciding not to fantasize about celebrities / made up people /myself in 10-20 years, was more than anything: strange. Not nessecarily depressing. I felt just weird. Now (about 5 months later) it has become normal. I no longer have the urge to fantasize about anyone other than myself.

DON'T try to end all of your fantasies all at once. I have tried that twice before and it didn't last longer than a week. Fantasizing can be very useful, because it helps you THINK about life, which is normal.

 

4. Meeting new people and DO stuff in my real life. Once you get rid of the fantasies, you will realize how empty your life really is: you need to FEEL this and acknowledge this feeling. This feeling sucks, but hopefully it will motivate you to do stuff. Lately I've been meeting a lot of people (I am currently searching for a new church. So I’m meeting a lot of people in different churches). If you're not religious, you could start doing sports, or just do something you like where you will meet new people on a regular basis. You need to fill the time you spent fantasizing on REAL things.

 

5. Prayer: Yes, I am a Christian and I believe God played a big role in all of this. However, if you are not a believer, I truly believe you can make great changes by doing the first 4 things.

I am still not 100% cured, because I do still spin around while fantasizing about myself. This is gonna be the next step. Not sure yet how I'm gonna do that, but I'm up for the challenge :-)

 

Oh and btw: I used NO medications!

 

I hope this will help people.

Let me know if you have questions.

[Mevve]

Hi Jeannette,

Welcome here!    It's great to read my tips are helpful to you!

I can relate to pretty much everything you have written - the fantasies are fun, until you realize you are really just missing out on the real world. I think we all thought we were the only ones living like this, but it's very nice to be able to share our experiences on forums like these.

Wishing you the best with practicing mindfulness,  it did wonders for me... :-)

 
jeannette said:

O my, I just discovered 3 days ago that something was wrong with my 'real world'. I love day dreaming, have done it since i was little as many people from here/internet have mentioned. To me it was just a beautiful world where i could escape unpleasant realities of this world and create myself a perfect one. I day dream about different things but mostly love. Being single, all the 20+ years of my life, i day dreamed about boyfriends, meeting my prince charming and all of that, you get the picture. It was all good, i knew it was not real, i knew none of it would be real in real life but i love dreaming about it, it makes me happy. Until 3 days ago, where something happened and in a snap of a second i realized how daydreaming has been hurting my life. Somehow, my brain interpreted my daydreams a reality,and even though i know it was not reality, my daydreams left a trail in my brain causing it to take it as maybe a little bit of a reality(well at least i think it did).

Now, don't get me wrong, i 100% know my fantasy world is not real, but that moment made me realize how day dreaming was messing me up. I started looking in the past and how daydreaming have ruined my chances of having a real relationship, it was like a slap in the face, i was shocked on how much i have missed out while day dreaming. day dreaming did not hurt my work life, or my ability to make new strong friendships, but when it comes to my love life, it is another story. Today, i decided to google about it and see if there are other people like me and see what they do to make it go away. I am amazed by the fact that i am not the only one. 

Since 3 days ago, i realize that being aware of what i am doing  and stopping the daydreams as soon as i am aware of them will help me stop and these tips reinforced my belief about mindfulness being the key to stopping MD.

Thanks so much for the tips :)

[Mevve]

Hi Kim!

Congrats on your progress!! Great to hear therapy worked for someone else aswell.

Wishing you a happy new year, in which the MD will only become a smaller and smaller part of your life...... :-)

 
Kim Katz said:

Dear all, I know I am answering to a quite old posted message, but I just wanted to share this with you as it is in the same direction as what Mevve says in her message.  I have been in a therapy since July of this year and also treated  for social phobia and avoidant personnality disorder and since my therapy is working fine, I have realized that my MDD has diminished a lot. In this therapay I am "forced" to  have contact with reality, with people, face my fears and treat them by "forcing" to live them. It is done very softly and in a graduate manner. Thanx to that I am little by little withdrawing my dream world and living real life and some of my dreams in real life.  I must confess, I have started to find real life quite nice and interesting. I am also very motivated to find things to do when I feel the need to start fantazising. It is also very clear in my mind now, that dreams are dreams, and even if they help me  a lot and I love them dearly, they are dreams, and they will never replace real experience...  there ... I just wanted to share this with you, for I am so happy, it is happening !!  I do not take real medicine, but my doctor gave me a slight antidepressant plant  ( St-John's wort) very well known here in Europe (the most sold natural antidepressant in the world) and it helps me to improve my mood and therefore to increase my motivation.

I wish you all the best for this coming new year !!!  Kim

[Mevve]

Hi Mohsin Kazi

No such thing as a bad client! If you are willing to get better, you can get better. If you have the right therapist.

If therapy with one therapist doesn't "work", maybe try another one? My therapist didn't know about MD, but he *was* to help me with my anxiety, depression, etc. I believe dealing with the underlying reasons will help you improve you with your MD.

Good luck with that!

And don't be afraid,  the world is alot less scary than what you think it is.

Mohsin Kazi said:

Hi Merve,

Ive been thinking along the same lines recently . You know therapy and hopefully joining a spiritual(Not religious) order after that.

Ill be 29 next month and as you mentioned someplace that a person is really nothing because the fantasies arent true , atleast I can relate to that but Im reallly afraid.

Like u I too suffer from pathological anxiety and the associated problems that come along with it.

Ive been in therapy for almost ten years but it hasnt helped me , I dont know why probably I had a bad therapist or I've been a bad client whatever the reason.

Anyway your post gives me a heart , so thankyou :)

[Andy Sortman]

This is a very good approach to our common problems dealing with life and the tendency to cope with feelings by daydreaming about impossiblities.

I agree with your analysis completely.

i would like to be your online friend.

Thanks,

Andy Sortman

[Mevve]

Hi Andy,

Well its very nice to hear you can relate! 

Have you been able to quit MD? Are you in the process of trying to quit?

[Leda]

Hi
Thanks for your tips and for sharing your incredible story.
Like you I am a christian and I believe faith will really help me control myself. I was born in africa and I thought that my problem was a curse or result of black magic for jealousy as I was a bright child who learn to read and write at the age of 4 and could write a full letter at the age of 6 and people around me used to find it impressive. My all life I fought to stop it but just couldnt Three days ago I found out that it was a known problem that others share which felt so so good. I am still determined to stop it amd I'll try the tips. I looked up the therapy and mindfullness training in my area and I cant afford it. If I cannot access it withthe public service I.ll just get the books and try it by myself.
Also ordered clematis for daydreaming. Lets see what it does.
Contrary to most people here I am quite sociable have a big family and I love to engage to otherpeople so I think it wont be that hard hopefully.

[Moller Molla]

Thanks for the great info, and I'm with you that once you get rid of it and concentrate on real life it gets more interesting.

 

[Joey B]

Thanks Mevve. I'm actually copying all this into a little text file and then doing some research to elaborate each item and try to take baby steps.  If/when I get back into therapy I'll bring that to their attention too!  I wish you continued success and thank you for sharing this.  Some of it may seem kind-of common sense and 'results' vary for everyone because indeed we all may or may not have different physical and mental issues contributing to it, but heck it's more to work with than we ordinarily have! =) 

[Mevve]

@Leda, Moller Molla and Joey B

Thank you all for the feedback guys! I appreciate it a lot and truly hope it will help you overcome MD.

Let me know when and how things start to improve, I'm very interested in that. :-)

Wish you all the best!

[Mevve]

How is everyone doing? I believe some of you were saying you were going into therapy etc... I'm curious, any good results so far? :-) 

[Satchi R]

I think MD makes one very socially awkward and weird socially.Is that true?

[writerspeak]

Agreed! I can atleast atest to that!

Satchi R said:

I think MD makes one very socially awkward and weird socially.Is that true?